UK Lawmakers Urge Government to Remove Foreign Criminals, Most at Large

The UK Home Office must address the issue of some 13,000 foreign criminals remaining in the United Kingdom, the UK Parliament Home Affairs Committee said Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — With a total of 13,000 foreign national offenders currently in the United Kingdom, 5,789 of these not in prison and living in UK communities, most for over two years, the Home Office must draw up plans on the numbers it plans to deport, the committee said in a statement after releasing the latest The work of the Immigration Directorates quarterly report and revealing its findings.

"Despite repeated warnings, the Home Office is still unable to remove foreign offenders from the UK. We agree with the Prime Minister that the Home Office should have done better…The public would expect our membership of the European Union to make it easier to deport European offenders, but this is clearly not the case," Committee Chair Keith Vaz was quoted in the statement as saying.

The report comes ahead of the upcoming Brexit referendum on UK membership in the European Union. Prime Minister David Cameron and the leaders of the 27 EU member states agreed in February to grant the United Kingdom a special status within the bloc in a deal involving the United Kingdom gaining more control over EU migration.

EU citizens comprise the largest groups in the UK prison population, according to the Home Affairs Committee. Nearly 10 percent, or 983, are from Poland, 764 are from Ireland, and 635 are from Romania. Offenders from the European Union should be prioritized when removing criminals, the committee stressed.

The latest ONS migration figures indicate that long-term migration to the United Kingdom has increased by 20,000 in 2015, reaching a net figure of 333,000 for that year. Of these, 184,000 migrants came from EU countries.